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Chungkingosaurus
''Chungkingosaurus'', meaning "Chongqing Lizard", is a genus of herbivorous dinosaur from the Late Jurassic The Jurassic ( ) is a Geological period, geologic period and System (stratigraphy), stratigraphic system that spanned from the end of the Triassic Period million years ago (Mya) to the beginning of the Cretaceous Period, approximately Mya. The J ... Upper Shaximiao Formation in what is now China. It is a member of the Stegosauria. Description According to Dong e.a. the ''Chungkingosaurus jiangbeiensis'' holotype was one of the smallest stegosaurs with a length of less than four metres, even though it was apparently an adult, judging by the ossification of the sacrum. ''Chungkingosaurus'' sp. 1 was estimated at five metres; ''Chungkingosaurus'' sp. 2 was seen as longer than five metres. Dong e.a. indicated that ''Chungkingosaurus'' strongly resembled ''Tuojiangosaurus'', found in the same formation, in many anatomical details. ''Chungkingosaurus'' was different in its sm ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chungkingosaurus Scale
''Chungkingosaurus'', meaning "Chongqing Lizard", is a genus of herbivorous dinosaur from the Late Jurassic Upper Shaximiao Formation in what is now China. It is a member of the Stegosauria. Description According to Dong e.a. the ''Chungkingosaurus jiangbeiensis'' holotype was one of the smallest stegosaurs with a length of less than four metres, even though it was apparently an adult, judging by the ossification of the sacrum. ''Chungkingosaurus'' sp. 1 was estimated at five metres; ''Chungkingosaurus'' sp. 2 was seen as longer than five metres. Dong e.a. indicated that ''Chungkingosaurus'' strongly resembled ''Tuojiangosaurus'', found in the same formation, in many anatomical details. ''Chungkingosaurus'' was different in its smaller size, deeper snout and front lower jaws (resulting in a relatively high and narrow skull), and non-overlapping teeth with less pronounced denticles. ''Chungkingosaurus'' probably possessed two rows of plates and spikes on its back, which were arra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stegosauria
Stegosauria is a group of herbivorous ornithischian dinosaurs that lived during the Jurassic and early Cretaceous periods. Stegosaurian fossils have been found mostly in the Northern Hemisphere, predominantly in what is now North America, Europe, Africa, South America and Asia. Their geographical origins are unclear; the earliest unequivocal stegosaurian, ''Huayangosaurus taibaii'', lived in China. Stegosaurians were armored dinosaurs (thyreophorans). Originally, they did not differ much from more primitive members of that group, being small, low-slung, running animals protected by armored scutes. An early evolutionary innovation was the development of spikes as defensive weapons. Later species, belonging to a subgroup called the Stegosauridae, became larger, and developed long hindlimbs that no longer allowed them to run. This increased the importance of active defence by the thagomizer, which could ward off even large predators because the tail was in a higher position, pointing ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Huayangosauridae
Huayangosauridae (derived from ''Huayangosaurus'', " Huayang Guo Zhi reptile") is a family of stegosaurian dinosaurs from the Jurassic of China. The group is defined as all taxa closer to the namesake genus ''Huayangosaurus'' than ''Stegosaurus'', and was originally named as the family Huayangosaurinae by Zhiming Dong and colleagues in the description of ''Huayangosaurus''. Huayangosaurinae was originally differentiated by the remaining taxa within Stegosauridae by the presence of teeth in the , an , and a . Huayangosaurinae, known from the Middle Jurassic of the Shaximiao Formation, was proposed to be intermediate between Scelidosaurinae and Stegosaurinae, suggesting that the origins of stegosaurs lay in Asia. Following phylogenetic analyses, Huayangosauridae was expanded to also include the taxon ''Chungkingosaurus'', known from specimens from younger Late Jurassic deposits of the Shaximiao Formation. Huayangosauridae is either the sister taxon to all other stegosaurs, or close t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tuojiangosaurus
''Tuojiangosaurus'' (meaning "Tuo River lizard") is a genus of herbivorous stegosaurian dinosaur from the Late Jurassic Period, recovered from the Upper Shaximiao Formation of what is now Sichuan Province in China. Description ''Tuojiangosaurus'' was a large stegosaur, reaching in length and in body mass. Physically similar to the North American ''Stegosaurus'', ''Tuojiangosaurus'' is the best understood of the Chinese stegosaurs. In 1977, Dong provided a diagnosis but this largely consisted of traits shared with other stegosaurus. In 1990, Peter Malcolm Galton pointed out an autapomorphy: the spines of the vertebrae of the tail base possess spines with bony skirts running from their front to the sides. ''Tuojiangosaurus'' has the typical narrow and low head, bulky body, and low teeth of other stegosaurids. The limbs, especially the arms, are rather short.Paul, G.S., 2010, ''The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs'', Princeton University Press p. 221 There are at least twenty- ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stegosaurinae
Stegosauridae is a family of thyreophoran dinosaurs (armoured dinosaurs) within the suborder Stegosauria. The clade is defined as all species of dinosaurs more closely related to ''Stegosaurus'' than ''Huayangosaurus''.David B. Weishampel, Peter Dodson, Halszka Osmólska. The ''Dinosauria'' (2nd ed.). Berkeley: University of California Press. The name ‘Stegosauridae’ is thus a stem-based name taken from the well-represented genus – ''Stegosaurus'' (meaning ‘roofed lizard’). Fossil evidence of stegosaurids, dating from the Middle Jurassic through the Early Cretaceous, have been recovered from North America, Eurasia and Africa. The clade Stegosauridae is composed of the genera ''Stegosaurus'', ''Dacentrurus'', '' Miragaia'', '' Loricatosaurus'', and ''Kentrosaurus'', with the last considered to be at the base of the clade. The stegosaurids like all other stegosaurians were quadrupedal herbivores that exhibited the characteristic stegosaurian dorsal dermal plates. These ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shaximiao Formation
The Shaximiao Formation () is a Middle Jurassic, Middle to Late Jurassic aged geological formation in Sichuan, China, most notable for the wealth of dinosaurs fossils that have been excavated from its strata. The Shaximiao Formation is exposed in and around the small township of Dashanpu (), situated seven kilometres north-east from Sichuan's third largest city, Zigong, in the Da'an District, Zigong, Da'an District. Geology The Shaximiao Formation includes two distinct subunits: The upper and lower Shaximiao Formations (), although they are commonly referred to as one, simply being called the "Shaximiao Formation". The upper Shaximiao Formation is also known as the Shangshaximiao Formation, and the lower Shaximiao Formation is also known as the Xiashaximiao Formation, which are direct Transliteration, transliterations of the Chinese names. Both subunits primarily consist of purple-red mudstones, with variable sand inclusion. and siltstones with interbedded sandstones. Dinosau ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dong Zhiming
Dong Zhiming (Chinese: 董枝明, Pinyin: ''Dǒng Zhimíng''; born January 1937) is a Chinese vertebrate paleontologist formerly employed at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) in Beijing. He began working at the IVPP in 1962, studying under Yang Zhongjian, who was director at the time. He has described fossil remains of many dinosaurs. He investigated and described the Shaximiao Formation; an important contribution to science since they are composed of Middle Jurassic beds which do not commonly yield fossils. Early life and education Dong Zhiming was born in January 1937 in Weihai, Shandong. At the age of 13, Dong was introduced to dinosaurs by a museum exhibit showcasing hadrosaur fossils. Dong graduated from university in 1962 with a degree in biology. Career After graduating, Dong Zhiming began working at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) in Beijing where he was mentored by Yang Zhongjian, the "father of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Herbivore
A herbivore is an animal anatomically and physiologically adapted to eating plant material, for example foliage or marine algae, for the main component of its diet. As a result of their plant diet, herbivorous animals typically have mouthparts adapted to rasping or grinding. Horses and other herbivores have wide flat teeth that are adapted to grinding grass, tree bark, and other tough plant material. A large percentage of herbivores have mutualistic gut flora that help them digest plant matter, which is more difficult to digest than animal prey. This flora is made up of cellulose-digesting protozoans or bacteria. Etymology Herbivore is the anglicized form of a modern Latin coinage, ''herbivora'', cited in Charles Lyell's 1830 ''Principles of Geology''.J.A. Simpson and E.S.C. Weiner, eds. (2000) ''The Oxford English Dictionary'', vol. 8, p. 155. Richard Owen employed the anglicized term in an 1854 work on fossil teeth and skeletons. ''Herbivora'' is derived from Latin ''herba' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peter Malcolm Galton
Peter Malcolm Galton (born 14 March 1942 in London) is a British vertebrate paleontologist who has to date written or co-written about 190 papers in scientific journals or chapters in paleontology textbooks, especially on ornithischian and prosauropod dinosaurs. With Robert Bakker in a joint article published in ''Nature'' in 1974, he argued that dinosaurs constitute a natural monophyletic group, in contrast to the prevailing view that considered them polyphyletic A polyphyletic group is an assemblage of organisms or other evolving elements that is of mixed evolutionary origin. The term is often applied to groups that share similar features known as homoplasies, which are explained as a result of conver ... as consisting of two different not closely related orders, thus initiating a revolution in dinosaur studies and contributing to the revival of the popularity of dinosaurs in the field of paleontology. Publications * * * Galton, P.M., 1974, "The ornithischian dinosaur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chialingosaurus
''Chialingosaurus'' (meaning "Chialing Lizard") is a genus of herbivorous stegosaurian dinosaur similar to ''Kentrosaurus'' from the Upper Shaximiao Formation, Late Jurassic beds in Sichuan Province in China. Its age makes it one of the oldest species of stegosaurs, living about 160 million years ago. Since it was an herbivore, scientists think that ''Chialingosaurus'' probably ate ferns and cycads, which were plentiful during the period when ''Chialingosaurus'' was alive. Discovery and species The fossils of ''Chialingosaurus'' were collected by the geologist Kuan Yaowu or Guan Yao-Wu in 1957, at Taipingstai in Quxian County, while surveying the Chialing River in southern China. The type species ''Chialingosaurus kuani'' was named and described by paleontologist Yang Zhongjian, ("C. C. Young") two years later in 1959. The generic name refers to the Chialing. The specific name honours Kuan. ''Chialingosaurus'' was the first stegosaurian described from China.C.-C. Young, 195 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mamenchisaurus
''Mamenchisaurus'' (or spelling pronunciation ) is a genus of sauropod dinosaur known for their remarkably long necks which made up nearly half the total body length. Numerous species have been assigned to the genus; however, many of these might be questionable. Fossils have been found in the Sichuan Basin and Yunnan Province in China. Several species are from the Upper Shaximiao Formation whose geologic age is uncertain. However, evidence suggests that this be no earlier than the Oxfordian stage of the Late Jurassic. ''M. sinocanadorum'' dates to the Oxfordian stage (158.7 to 161.2 mya) and ''M. anyuensis'' to the Aptian stage of the Early Cretaceous around 114.4 mya. Most species were medium- to large-size sauropods in length.Russell, D.A., Zheng, Z. (1993). "A large mamenchisaurid from the Junggar Basin, Xinjiang, People Republic of China." ''Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences'', (30): 2082-2095. Two as-yet-undescribed cervical vertebrae, which might belong to ''M. sinocanado ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Omeisaurus
''Omeisaurus'' (meaning "Omei lizard") is a genus of sauropod dinosaur from the Middle Jurassic Period (Bathonian-Callovian stage) of what is now China. Its name comes from Mount Emei, where it was discovered in the lower Shaximiao Formation of Sichuan Province. Like most sauropods, ''Omeisaurus'' was herbivorous and large. The largest species, ''O. tianfuensis'', measured long, and weighed . Other species were much smaller, as the type species ''O. junghsiensis'' reached a size of in length and in body mass, and ''O. maoianus'' reached a size of and . Discovery and species Initial discovery and ''O. changshouensis'' The initial discovery of ''Omeisaurus'' was in 1936 when Charles Lewis Camp and Yang Zhongjian collected a partial skeleton from strata of the Shaximiao Formation in Szechuan, China.Young, C. C. (1939)On a new Sauropoda, with notes on other fragmentary reptiles from Szechuan ''Bulletin of the Geological Society of China'', ''19''(3), 279-315.Dong, Z. (1983)T ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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